1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the monitoring of mobile and remote endpoint devices over a very large area of service.
2. Discussion of the Background
Asset management is a critical part of any business entity engaged in the transfer of raw or finished goods. It is important to carefully manage resupply of raw materials to ensure that the manufacturing or service element of an industry does not halt and to carefully manage transportation of finished goods to minimize inventory held for sale. Those companies that do not optimize manufacturing and materials handling are at a significant disadvantage.
The uncertainty associated with raw materials and finished goods in transit presents a problem in asset management. Companies generally operate with an element of uncertainty as to the exact time of delivery or location of pending delivery for products and raw materials in transit. Unforeseen conditions impacting the arrival of truck, rail, or other vessel deliveries are impossible to predict and difficult to model. Real-time information about material in transit can be used to forecast deliveries, schedule manpower and other materials, and predict finished goods inventory supply.
The transportation industry estimates in excess of 40 billion dollars a year in cargo theft lost in transit. Loss of cargo happens in a wide variety of ways, from employee/driver theft to the organized capture of entire fleets of trailers and rail-cars. The transportation industry has been struggling to limit loss through radio communication means for over a decade. The cellular telephone industry has enabled a host of communications products that are making an impact. These products provide many functions from standard voice communication data services such as Internet or E-mail, and real-time position reporting and status of vehicle operations such as speed, temperature, or brake conditions.
Conventional solutions typically rely on cellular communication systems or satellite communication systems. Existing technology solutions that rely on cellular coverage are generally not ubiquitous in coverage. Cellular coverage may be adequate for urban and major interstate routes but becomes unreliable in rural or sparsely populated regions. Additionally, a cellular network implemented primarily for voice commerce is a poor solution for rail or vessel transportation data communication. Also, as cellular technology advances, the protocols have transitioned from analog to digital and now to tri-band Global System for Mobile Communication (GSM). Thus, some communications systems developed only a few years ago are already obsolete.
Additionally, cellular communication asset management systems are inherently two-way in nature and thus require continuous line power for operation. This type of system does not operate effectively on battery power only without periodic reconnection to line power such as the automotive power system.
Satellite based communication systems mitigate some of the problems associated with cellular asset management devices. For instance, satellite modems are not limited to the service coverage area of cellular telephone corridors. Instead, the area of service is related to the satellite system selected for use and thereby solves the problem of rural and vessel coverage.
Satellite asset management systems are preferred if the communication system can provide adequate information bandwidth to support the application requirements. Generally, satellite asset management systems are the successors of cellular systems and offer broadband feature sets such as Internet and voice over Internet-Protocol. Broadband satellite services are typically expensive and generally prone to communication failures due to weather and obstruction. Most asset management systems which utilize broadband satellite must package broadband services such as voice, or Internet in order to justify the cost of the data bandwidth even though the information for asset management is generally low-bandwidth in nature. This drives the cost of satellite-based asset management systems up in order to package enough value to offset cost.
Additionally, the transmit power required to communicate to geo-stationary satellites imposes power system problems for a remote asset management device. Existing satellite asset management systems generally must incorporate transmit power amplifiers of up to 10 Watts to adequately operate. As most satellite communication systems impose tightly controlled spectral masks, digital communication systems must incorporate linear or nearly linear (Class A or Class AB) power amplifier architectures to prevent spectral regrowth. As a result, the transmit device must be designed to produce up to 10 Watts with amplifier architectures which are typically only 40% efficient. This creates difficult design limitations which predominately require sufficient line power or high-density bulky battery systems to function.
Currently, satellite-based asset management systems use satellite architectures that are duplex in nature. In order to send data over a satellite, the remote device must generally negotiate a data channel. Even if the data is only one-way in nature, the communication modem must contain both receive and transmit capability to implement this negotiation.
Remote asset management devices must both listen and transmit in order to facilitate data transfer to and from a remote device.
Both cellular and two-way satellite asset management systems require available line power or extensive battery systems to operate. Even existing systems equipped with low power operational states must utilize excessive power to manage two-way communications as well as transmit with sufficient energy to operate within the communications infrastructure.
Existing asset management devices are generally located on the tractor-cab of the truck, train or vessel. This serves to locate the cargo while the load is attached. Unfortunately, when a load such as the trailer, rail-car, or barge is disconnected, the important information that provides value for asset management is lost. Trailers that get dropped-off by a driver may become lost for hours or days possibly resulting in the total loss of perishable loads, or missing deadlines for non-perishable loads that are often time critical. Thus, inventory management becomes difficult and highly labor intensive to minimize misplaced loads.
Rail-car tracking systems generally lag in capability behind trucking. While rail-cars remain on class 1 lines, the owners typically know when the rail-cars have passed checkpoints using barcode or visual identification systems, but once the rail-cars are placed on class 2 or class 3 lines there is generally no real-time tracking. Additionally, customers often use rail-cars as temporary storage thereby delaying offloading goods to maintain an average amount of storage of goods at the cost of the rail-fleet owner. Rail-fleet owners have a difficult time assessing demurrage charges because they may not know if the rail-car has been offloaded on schedule or where the rail-car is currently located. As a result, the only solution generally applied is to add new cars to the fleet to satisfy logistic problems of moving goods.
Barge and vessel owners generally are dependent on river pilots and deep-sea vessel operators for the location of goods using voice communication only. As such, commodity traders usually maintain a staff of logistics personnel to voice-track products as they are moved. A radio-telemetry product that works without a cellular infrastructure and without the requirement of available power can thus dramatically reduce the reliance of pilots and logistics staff.